Planning of Near-Minimum Time Trajectories for Manipulators

An efficient algorithm for solving minimum time trajectories planning problem of manipulators is proposed. This problem is meaningful in the sense that shortening of traveling time is directly related to improving productivity in manufacturing plants.Although many algorithms for planning the minimum time trajectory have been proposed, an efficient method has not necessarily been obtained yet. In the present paper, the dynamical equation of the manipulator is expressed by a path parameter s which does not depend on time, a two-point boundary value problem for an iterative equation represented by the parameter s is solved to obtain the near-minimum time joint trajectory. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a simple manipulator with two links and two degrees of freedom. Numerical results show that fairly good trajectories can be obtained by this method with less calculation time. Furthermore, this method is easily applicable to multiple joint manipulators because of the simplicity of calculation.